American Movie

Once again, Oscar snubbed one of the year's most widely acclaimed documentaries. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, American Movie chronicles an aspiring filmmaker's increasingly desperate bid to make Coven, an unfinished short horror movie that Mark Borchardt must complete in order to raise the funds to make Northwestern, his autobiographical epic about growing up in Wisconsin. The "let's put on a show" spirit that fueled all those Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland musicals burns bright in Borchardt, who has been making films (with titles such as The More, The Scarier III) since he was 12. But Borchardt is no boy wonder. He is 32-years-old and the single father of three. He does odd jobs, such as vacuuming carpets in a mausoleum. He is behind on his child support payments and hopelessly in debt. But nothing will deter him. Says one of his brothers, "His main asset is his mouth...I figured he'd become a stalker or a serial killer." This is no mockumentary from the This Is Spinal Tap school--you can't make this stuff up (in one scene, Mark employs his mother to work the camera for a pivotal shot in which an actor's head is rammed through a kitchen cabinet door, which stubbornly refuses to break). These days, nothing succeeds like failure, and Borchardt has become a periodic guest on Late Night With David Letterman. As a bonus, the DVD contains Coven. Highly recommended. (K. Lee Benson)